5 Solutions to Ecommerce Problems In 2016

In the Ecommerce Website Design domain, the odds are always heavily stacked against small time retailers. In 2015 small eCommerce retailers were all at seas trying to compete with bigger players, and in 2016, the struggle is expected to intensify. Shrinking buying power, mounting pressure to offer free shipping and increasing competition against manufacturers who have started selling directly to consumers will make the going all the more tough for small eCommerce website players. A big challenge for small eCommerce companies in 2016 is to stay afloat in adverse market conditions. In this article we will be talking about the possible ways to checkmate these threats.

Form Partnerships

If you have a large customer base, you can weather the storm easily. If you don’t, you need to look for ways to grow them fast. And the easiest way to make this happen in 2016 is by forging a strategic partnership with another company on an even ground. For instance, a jewelry eCommerce store can partner with an apparel eCommerce store and double their potential customer base including social media followers and email subscribers.

Build Traffic Sources

As they say, you need to put your eggs in different baskets, cultivating an array of traffic sources can help small e-commerce sites get a better footing. If one source dries there would a good mix of others to prop your business up. Look for those hidden forums where your target customers are discussing their interests and make your presence felt. It takes a lot to zero in on such obscure forums sites but it’s worth the trouble, because big companies ignore them for immediate sources that are usually paid. Also, don’t forget to work with your Marketing Consultants to ensure a proper Search Marketing Strategy. Preform regular website audits to make sure your site is calibrated to your ideal customer base.

Intelligent Merchandising

If you hinge your tactics on this one factor, you win hands down. This entails predicting what may be in vogue down the line, much before the large companies are able too. If you make yourself good at this, you can build a loyal followers of first-adopters. However you need to invest your time, and have the right strategy to find the best merchandise.

Build Customer Loyalty

Having a loyal band of customers is worth its weight in gold. Small eCommerce stores don’t have them because they don’t have the resources to build customer loyalty. That doesn’t mean you need to give up your efforts to develop customer loyalty. In 2016, you need to work on a strategy to keep your customers happy. You need to reinvent them quickly to retain shoppers.

Jump the Bandwagon

How about building your brand by partnering with large e-commerce sites? Many small eCommerce companies have managed to do this and so can you. All you need is the right product and perfect marketing tactics. However, don’t jump in blindly. Wait for the opportunity and seize it when it comes. Take small, but measured steps and you’ll reap the benefits soon enough.

In 2016, you need to think and act a bit different to keep big players away from eating into your profits. Genesis Web Designs can help you come up with some ground eCommerce design solutions. Contact us to change the way you do business in 2016.

]]>http://www.onlinewebconsultants.com/website-design-blog/5-solutions-to-ecommerce-problems-in-2016/feed/1Ecommerce and Social Media Allow Small Brands to Complete on Global Scalehttp://www.onlinewebconsultants.com/website-design-blog/ecommercewebsitedesign/
http://www.onlinewebconsultants.com/website-design-blog/ecommercewebsitedesign/#commentsMon, 31 Mar 2014 15:42:35 +0000http://www.onlinewebconsultants.com/website-design-blog/?p=28Ecommerce and Social Media Allow Small Brands to Complete on Global Scale

For eleven consecutive quarters, Ecommerce Website sales have experienced double-digit growth . Thanks in part to mobile device proliferation and social media, Ecommerce is in the midst of a major renaissance. Social networks specifically have altered the way Ecommerce brands go about marketing online. Such disruption has resulted in a new model for online retail referred to as social Ecommerce.

Ecommerce Social Media Landscape

Social Ecommerce Sites such as Zulily and Fancy combine flash sales sites with virally driven web experiences. The influence of social media on these sites shines through their approach to website development. A majority of Ecommerce websites feature the standard search bar and thumbnail covered results page. This new breed of Ecommerce site displays a HD image filled newsfeed with trending products, similar to Pinterest and Instagram.

Etsy and Storenvy are emerging Ecommerce sites for smaller up-and-coming brands. They feature similar Pinterest style layouts and social discovery of products. Despite catering to smaller brands and individual newcomers, they garner millions of visitors and are continuing to expand.

We witness these strategies being considered and applied every day and we see first hand how Ecommerce clients are aiming to infuse social media tactics into their existing web strategy. For smaller brands and Fortune 500s, new trends in social Ecommerce are providing economical and impactful tools for capturing market share in a crowded industry.

Economical Marketing for Wide Exposure

Ecommerce website entrepreneurs are already realizing that they can benefit monetarily from a socially driven marketing strategy. By 2015, over $30 billion worth of transactions will be attributed to referrals from social media networks. As social media continues to grow, with the likes of Instagram and Tumblr, it is likely for such trends in e-tail to continue expanding.

Ecommerce Website Design with Social Media

Twitter has over 230 million users and is already embracing Ecommerce integration. Chirpify is a Twitter driven service that allows brands to sell products within a Tweet. Brands can create custom product Tweets that user can reply to with #BuyNow to instantly conduct transactions.

Pinterest, which integrates heavily with Ecommerce, has 25 million users who are primarily female and have higher than average income levels. J. Crew, a global retail brand, wholeheartedly believes in the power of Pinterest.

This past October, the brand posted the entirety of their fall catalogue, over 60,000 products, on their Pinterest board. Despite J. Crew’s size, emerging brands should contemplate their approach to marketing their products.

Smaller brands must acknowledge that the impact of social rests with influencing shoppers, gaining notoriety for a brand, and moving shoppers along the buying cycle. A report from eMarketer found that social media is a relied upon tactic for marketing professionals to increase brand awareness

Influencers and Brand Ambassadors Are the New Salesmen

Over 80% of shoppers in a MarketForce survey, cited the prevalence of social media activity on purchase decisions. Prior to making a final buy, shoppers are consulting with their social networks.

For global conglomerates it may seem like a meager number, but for the hungry up-and-comer it represents a substantial market opportunity.

Rather than depend solely on re-marketing and SEO campaigns, eCommerce brands

Ecommerce Website Design Social Media

can frame product suggestions with a user’s connections on social media networks. As shoppers become desensitized to traditional digital marketing, social media can serve as an alternative to cookie driven advertising.

Google made headlines recently for incorporating Google+ profile images with search ads. If someone in a users network reviewed a local restaurant, he or she will see a thumbnail image of that friend and relevant review for the searched product. In addition to advice on social networks, shoppers continue to rely on celebrities and influencers to learn about trending products.

Some brands even go so far as to offer over $10,000 per Tweet for a celebrity to mention their product. Although small brands can’t afford to shell out such cash, they can achieve viral recognition in other ways.

In the past marketers relied upon expensive endorsement deals with celebrities and athletes like Derek Jeter or Tiger Woods. By using social media affiliates, similar to affiliate marketing on blogs, emerging brands can capitalize on social media power users with significant viral sway.

On a smaller scale, but with the same strategy in mind, budding brands can provide free prototypes to popular accounts on Instagram, Twitter, and Pinterest. Users like For minimal capital, a brand can expose their product to millions of potential customers.

eCommerce Websites Have Evolved Beyond Amazon and Ebay

Whereas the largest online retail giants cater to everyone and everything imaginable, the latest Ecommerce website design success stories are much more targeted and niche.

Sophia Amoruso started Nasty Gal as an Ebay store for vintage thrift store clothes, and has

evolved into a $100 million eCommerce operation . Amoruso helped grow notoriety for her brand by using MySpace in its early days. She would hyper target the ideal female shopper with interests that she felt aligned with her brand image.

Another example of social Ecommerce success stories is Wanelo. The website caters specifically to younger demographics with its flat-designed website, social product newsfeed and trendy copy.

Yet on the other hand, one of the most successful Ecommerce operations in 2013 was Zulily.

Ecommerce Website Design

Despite the lack of trendy news coverage, Zulily focuses on one of the leading consumer demographics, the American mom. Zulily went public this year alongside high profile IPOs like Twitter.

Ecommerce is heading towards increased personalization, and social media is driving the trend. People are expecting personalized digital experience wherever they interact with a brand online. Whether they visit a news site or search YouTube, they expect recommendations and content catered to their interests.

Social Ecommerce strategies should be used as a supplementary tool for a brand’s marketing strategy. Alongside paid search and direct marketing (and of course a great idea), social Ecommerce tactics can help establish substantial brand notoriety and customer awareness.

And above all else, social media can serve as a digital soapbox for up-and-coming Ecommerce Website brands in need of notoriety. It is difficult, if not impossible, for new-comers to allocate the resources necessary for a national TV spot or full-page banner ad.

With minimal spending, an emergent brand can potentially compete with global competitors on a shopper’s tablet or laptop screen, and win.

For more information on how to get your site ready for 2014 and beyond, give us a call at 866-642-7164 or email us directly here.

Maybe you’re reading this article at your desk, and the headline above is displayed across a 28-inch monitor that you could see just as easily from across your office. Perhaps you have pulled this site up on your laptop, and you’ve got 13 inches worth of screen to view. However, if you’re like the rising number of consumers around the world who browse, network, and shop online, chances are good that the screen you’re using right now fits in your hand — and you want the content you’re viewing to look great on that device. The one-size-fits-all nature of responsive Ecommerce Website Design is quickly becoming the standard in e-commerce, particularly with the rise in mobile device usage, and the notion that accessing a smartphone or tablet has become just as simple as using a traditional computer.

Responsive Ecommerce Website Design

If you look at the statistics around mobile usage, it becomes clear why creating a better experience for smartphone and tablet users is so important. A typical American household contains an average of 5.7 mobile devices. Beyond U.S. borders, 56 percent of people own a smartphone, and half of them are using that device as their main connection to the Internet. Similarly, close to three-quarters of tablet users are making weekly purchases from those mobile devices.

The next building block in international e-commerce

Businesses have built out their online content to specifically target their audience. They have created e-catalogs, blogs, spec sheets, videos, and more. They have localized for key markets to ensure they connect with target buyers in their preferred languages, as well as taking into account other cultural considerations. The next step is to make sure those target buyers have a consistently superior user experience regardless of whether they shop from a desktop computer, a laptop, an iPad, or an Android. In other words, responsive Web design is the next must-have for ecommerce companies.

Today, brands need to ensure that their primary Web sites are optimized for local markets and multiple mobile devices. That entails not only configuring for any device, but also properly adjusting for the audience and its particular preferences and habits across the board. Responsive design meets these needs by adapting to any mobile screen resolution and creating an online environment that encourages increased conversions and ultimately, increased sales.

Among the benefits of responsive design are these key results:

Adjust once, distribute for multiple audiences.

With a responsive Web site design, a brand can translate and localize core content for specific audiences in one fell swoop. By limiting the number of individual sites being adjusted, businesses can greatly reduce the risk of making mistakes by simplifying an already complex process.

Responsive Ecommerce Website Design

Maintain consistent brand identity.

When a company creates a single site that can support multiple translations and multiple device form factors, it’s easier to deliver consistent brand messages and user experiences. Maintaining conformity across all platforms allows brands to establish loyalty and positive recognition among consumers across the globe.

Optimize for search.

Responsive Web sites are more Google-friendly for the very reason that they make it easier to share information across devices; when a company maintains a singular and streamlined presence across channels, search engines don’t have to track down multiple URLs. As a result, search results become more favorable for the brand.

Just as with other ecommerce website design strategies, responsive design is not foolproof. This approach won’t mask poor translation, for example, and it will not serve as a Band-Aid for a lack of localization. International e-commerce requires companies to build core sites that reflect their brands and speak to their target markets in an informed, relatable way. Once that foundation is in place, responsive design can help brands reach the growing number of consumers around the world who are increasingly as likely to shop from a smartphone or tablet as from a desktop or laptop computer.

For more information on ecommerce website design or making your website responsive and ready for business, please contact us at 866-642-7164 or email us here.

As more online retailers seek to provide a good mobile shopping experience, expect to see a significant number of Ecommerce Web Design changes in 2014. These redesigned sites are likely to follow many popular design trends that are currently impacting entertainment sites, publishing sites, and mobile applications.

Ecommerce platforms like Magento, Shopify, or even WooCommerce (on WordPress) can have a strong influence on how online shops are designed. This can make it more difficult for online merchants to simply redesign a site to keep up with the latest fad. But in 2014, even those sellers that take an “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” approach to website design may be forced to do some remodeling thanks to the continued growth in mobile Internet traffic. In fact, some predict that in 2014 mobile Internet usage will pass desktop Internet usage, and mobile-based ecommerce might account for 30 percent of Internet retail sales.

Given that ecommerce business are likely to be resigning to support mobile, these sites may also follow other important web design trends.

1. Responsive Design

Mobile is going to be the primary driver for ecommerce web design in 2014, but don’t expect Internet retailers to abandon desktop users. Rather, responsive design, which has already been a trend in ecommerce site design, will to continue to grow in popularity, allowing online sellers to provide a good shopping experience regardless of the device a shopper is using.

As a subset, if you will, of responsive design, you may see more site designers using the CSS Flexible Box Layout Module.This is a proposed World Wide Web Consortium standard that is enjoying relatively good support across browsers, including at least partial support in Chrome 31, Firefox 25, Internet Explorer 10, Safari 7, Opera 18, iOS Safari 7, Android Browser 2.1, Blackberry Browser 10, and IE Mobile 10.

Three resources will help those unfamiliar with the Flexible Box Layout Module. These include CSS-Tricks’ “A Complete Guide to Flexbox”, the Mozilla Developer Network’s ”Using CSS Flexible Boxes,” and Philip Walton’s ”Solved by Flexbox”.

2. Finger Friendly Interfaces

The focus on mobile and what many call mobile-first site design is also likely to lead to more finger-friendly interfaces in 2014, since on tablets and smartphones most users are interacting with the web page using fingertips or, perhaps, a stylus.

First, expect to see fewer content sliders. These sliders have long been popular on websites since they allow merchants to show a lot of information in a relatively small amount of screen space, but they tended to have relatively small next buttons that can make them a bit more difficult to manage on a smartphone.

Next, be on the lookout for larger navigation buttons and links, as site designers try to make it easier for shoppers to browse site hierarchies or click links.

3. Flat Design

Flat design can be seen in the Windows 8 interface, in Apple’s iOS 7, and in dozens of popular websites. This aesthetic tends to avoid drop shadows or similar — focusing on strong colors, and interesting fonts.

This design trend has a few advantages at present. It often leads to simple user interfaces that are relatively easy to make responsive. It tends to use graphics in a way that leads to relatively smaller file sizes and, therefore, faster loading pages, and it can be a differentiator for sites.

Sites like Canopy, which allows users to find and share products available on Amazon, offers a good example of how flat design is likely to be applied in ecommerce site design.

4. More Content on One Page

In 2014, expect to see site designers and developers adding more content to individual pages in at least two ways.

Quick views, which allow shoppers to get additional product information without leaving a product category page, are likely to continue to grow in popularity since that makes it particularly easy for mobile shoppers to learn more about products without having to load additional pages.

Also look for pages to become longer, perhaps, even scrolling “infinitely” like Tumblr or Pinterest.

5. Interesting Fonts

Online typography has been exploding, if you will, in the past few years, and this trend is not going to slow down in 2014. Expect to see sites using distinctive, brand supporting fonts to convey an online store’s feel.

6. Great Big Graphics

This particular trend may seem counterintuitive in the context of mobile Internet use and the overall design to provide a better mobile experience. But it turns out that big graphics really is relative to screen size, and with a bit of good site development, designers can deliver big graphics appropriate for a user’s device.

Relatively larger graphics that link to products, also tend to make for finger-friendly user interfaces, which is another reason this trend will grow.

7. Video and Other Rich Content

Mobile video consumption is on the rise, more than doubling last year, so it is clear that consumers don’t mind watching videos on tablets or even on smartphones.

In this context, video gives online retailers an excellent medium for providing useful content and detailed product information. Look for more retailers to begin including video or other rich media content in content marketing and in product descriptions.

For more information on how to get your site ready for 2014 and beyond, give us a call at 866-642-7164 or email us directly here.